During the college entrance exam, bronze runes seep through a math paper, and frost forms on the proctor’s fingertips. When the bark of a century-old ginkgo peels away to reveal the fiery patterns of the Classic of the Great Freedom, Lin Zhou discovers that the exam is actually the switch that will trigger a spiritual qi revival five thousand years in the making. Every exam hall throughout history has been a proving ground for civilization, and perfect scorers have become fuel for an engine of eternal life. From cybernetic creatures of the Classic of Mountains and Seas running amok to quantum Buddha-light tearing through the proctoring System, he wields a fragment of a bronze exam paper, using The Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art to break through the impasse and the Classic of Mountains and Seas to prove his Dao. As exam halls spanning different eras collapse into a multidimensional battlefield, Lin Zhou must choose: become the one who sets the questions for a new civilization, or a rebel who burns every standardized answer to ash.
